Remains of airmen MIA since 1966 identified

The Defense Department’s POW/Missing Personnel Office has identified remains of two airmen missing in action from the Vietnam War, officials said Thursday.

Lt. Col. Charles M. Walling of Phoenix and Maj. Aado Kommendant of Lakewood, N.J., will be honored Aug. 8 at Arlington National Cemetery, Va., in a group burial — the 46th anniversary of the fatal crash. Remains of Walling will also be buried in a separate ceremony Friday at Arlington.

Walling and Kommendant were flying an F-4C aircraft on Aug. 8, 1966, when their plane crashed while on a close air support mission over Song Be Province, Vietnam, officials said. Other Americans in the area reported seeing the aircraft crash and no parachutes were deployed, but search and rescue efforts were not successful in the days following the crash, DoD said.

A joint U.S.-Vietnam team first excavated the site in 1994 and found Walling’s dog tag and other military equipment, military officials said. Another excavation two years ago recovered the remains and additional evidence, officials said.

DNA from Walling’s sister was used to help identify the remains

U-2 pilot Powers to receive Silver Star

The pilot whose spy plane was shot down in 1960 over the Soviet Union is set to receive a Silver Star posthumously.

A ceremony to award the third-highest combat military decoration for valor to Francis Gary Powers is scheduled for June 15 at the Pentagon.

An Air Force report last year said that the U-2 pilot distinguished himself with his gallantry during harsh interrogation in Soviet prisons.

Powers was swapped for a Soviet spy in February 1962 in Berlin. He died in a 1977 helicopter crash.

Powers posthumously was awarded the Prisoner of War Medal and a CIA medal in 2000, after incident records were unsealed.

His son, Francis Gary Powers Jr. told the Bristol Herald Courier that the award is a wonderful honor and that the family is humbled.